


Fire Ban

by Smokedcapybara



Series: (Apprentice) Park Ranger Handsome [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 22:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17374103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokedcapybara/pseuds/Smokedcapybara
Summary: Connor Murphy doesn’t know why he drove to the State Park forty minutes from his house when he could’ve gotten high just as easily anywhere closer to home, but he's glad he did





	Fire Ban

Connor Murphy doesn’t know why he drove to the State Park forty minutes from his house when he could’ve gotten high just as easily anywhere closer to home. Like a Denny’s or something.

But then he wasn’t really thinking at the time, he just wanted to get far away. He couldn’t even remember what started the argument by the time he started stomping up the first trail he saw. It had been one of the worst ones in a while and everything had started to blur together half-way through until next thing he knew he was on the highway and noticing the sign for the park next right.

He hadn’t even managed to calm down yet, working himself up into a bigger fury the more he thought about his family and everything to do with them.

So he was still pissed off. He was pissed off and now also tired and hungry - had he even had a chance to eat any of his breakfast before storming out? - and it was too hot so he was sweating buckets and he really just wanted to sit and smoke but the path he’d taken was apparently the hardmode hiking trail cause it was all steep inclines with no convenient places to sit. Which really was just impractical and rude. And totally homophobic, seriously.

He was just about to give up and go back to the parking lot to hotbox his car or something when he saw it. The Log. It was perfect. It was wide and a little off the path and kinda half-way behind a large tree. The perfect place to hide from the world for a few hours getting high. Yep.

He draped the coat he’d been regretting wearing since less than a minute into his hike over The Log and plopped himself down on it, back against the tree.

Taking a minute to recover from the frankly very unwanted exercise, he closed his eyes with his head leaned back and took a deep breath, before finally taking out his lighter and a joint.

He’d just flicked his lighter on when he heard a voice.

“I-I-I-uhm-s-sir, there’s a-uh-a fire ban. You’re not-you’re not allowed to-to-um-” despite the stutter the words were spoken fast as if they were being forced out of the speaker’s chest through his mouth. As he whirled to look at the source the speed of the words tapered like a car screeching to a halt.

Which was the exact thing his brain did when he saw the man - no,  _ boy _ \- who’d spoken.

He was around Connor’s age with shining blonde hair and a rounded face covered in a deep red blush. His sad brown eyes seemed to pull Connor in, something in them feeling intimately familiar.

Absently, he flicked his lighter off and lowered it to his lap.

As Connor continued to stare, the boy began to fidget with the bottom of his light brown shirt. Again he spoke, curling more into himself as he did.

“G-goo-um-tha-than-uh-s-s-s-s-s-sorry!”

The last word seemed to punch violently out of him and the boy turned a flinch at his own words into a jerky about-face. Connor was hit by a sudden need to stop the boy from leaving.

“Hey wait!” he called out, and when the boy whirled back around he continued awkwardly, “um… what’s-what’s your name?” The boy straightened in shock and for a second their eyes finally met before the boy hunched back into himself slightly and his eyes anxiously darted around.

“oh-uh, E-Evan. Evan Hansen.” He made an aborted movement like he was going to extend his hand before shoving it in his pocket and slumping further.

“Connor. Murphy.” He flopped the hand with his joint around before remembering he was still holding it and putting it and his lighter away. “So...uh.” gesturing vaguely, he searched for a conversation topic for a minute before noticing the park name embroidered on the boy-Hansen-’s shirt and pointing at it. “You’re a Park Ranger? Aren’t-aren’t you a little young?”

He cringed internally.  _ Great going Connor, Gold Star conversationalist you are. _

“Oh! No-yeah I-I’m just an apprentice Park Ranger?”

Hansen seemed like he was going to continue into an unintelligible word-vomit so Connor broke in there to save him from himself.

“Awesome! Cool...um-so...what-uh-what exactly does an apprentice Park Ranger do? I’m guessing you don’t really have, like, the authority of a not-apprentice-Park Ranger, so, like, um…” he trailed off with a weird shrug/cringe hybrid.

“Well yeah, that’s-um-that’s a good guess? I mean-I-uh...I-I-I’m learning a lot about trees!” he flinched again, “and that’s lame s-s-sorry.”

“No! No, that’s-it’s not lame at all! What all do you know about this tree?” Connor gestured loosely at the tree he’d been leaning on before and groaned at himself.  _ Really?? ‘What do you know about this tree??’ what kind of stupid- _

His mental berating was cut off by an excited “oh!’ from Hansen before he dove into an energetic rant about the tree’s species.

Connor blinked and watched the anxious hunching and fidgeting wash away as he got more into what he was saying. The change was so drastic, it was like Hansen was  _ glowing _ , his eyes shining and his lips tugging up into a cute little smile.

He caught himself wondering what it would be like to kiss those lips and, blushing, forced himself to tune back in to what Hansen was saying.

Several minutes of stumbling conversation - and Connor desperately trying not to drift like that again - later, Hansen jolted like he’d been stung and scrambled to pull his phone from his pocket.

“I-I-I-I have to-to go, s-s-s-s-s-sorry!” he shouted like it pained him before turning once again and dashing off down the path.

Connor didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the spot Hansen had disappeared, before he sighed and laid down along the log to stare at the tree branches criss-crossing above him instead.

Finally he let his mind drift to the other boy’s soft-looking hair, the little curl in the corners of his lips, the way his blush spread across his face and stained his cheeks red, and that unnamable compelling  _ thing _ in Hansen’s eyes that Connor blamed for all of this. He fell asleep on the log to thoughts of those eyes glittering with happiness directed solely at him.


End file.
